You’re probably familiar with the iconic “bullet time” shots from The Matrix movies. What you may not know is that the filmmakers produced most of those shots with a circular rig of dozens of cameras. It was an ingeniously straightforward solution, and it’s a piece of movie magic that can be reproduced and even improved on.

Artist Richard Kendall was able to spend a little time with a 96-camera bullet time rig in China, and the results are amazing. Unlike the sequences done for The Matrix, Kendall used the cameras to take very long exposures that bring lights to life.

Each camera was used to take a 30 second exposure, which allowed the subjects to paint an image in mid air with lights. Most shots in the video have the subject seemingly frozen with colors and contrails exploding around them. The camera seems to pan around the light show so you can see it from all angles, but really that’s just the compilation of single frames from 96 different cameras.

The rig used here is set up in a half circle, but full circle setups can be used as well. To make fluid video from these single frames, you need to make the final frame rate something approaching that of regular films. Kendall’s videos are run at 25fps, which looks reasonably smooth.

According to Kendall, all the shots in the video are provided unedited. The shots that were assembled from the set are faithfully reproduced here. You probably don’t have 96 digital cameras around to pull this off, but it’s more in reach than a lot of movie magic.